How Hugurumi uses Quips to grow without slowing down her craft

Growing a community around your creative work takes time. Between creating, engaging, and showing up for the people who already support you, there's rarely room left to reach anyone new.

Silvia Parascandolo is the crochet designer behind Hugurumi. And she found a way to grow anyway.

Through Quips, the short public posts on Patreon's Home feed, she started sharing what she had already created: sneak peeks, work-in-progress shots, old TikTok clips. No extra effort. Nothing new to make. One of those old clips alone brought her 30 new members. Others turned her free members into paying ones. In two months, her total memberships grew by 17%.

📝 How does a Quip work?

If you'd rather spend your time creating your work than promoting it, here are four tips to turn casual visitors into paying members the way Silvia did.

Post your process

"Every month I share a brand new crochet pattern as a benefit for my paid members, together with sneak peeks of upcoming projects."

Before a finished amigurumi, one of the small, huggable crocheted characters Hugurumi is known for, Silvia is testing colors, reworking a shape that isn't right yet, deciding if something's even worth continuing. That part of her process used to stay private. Now some of it shows up publicly as a Quip.

"Honestly, I wasn't expecting anything at all," she said. "I was simply using Quips as a quick way to keep people updated, without any real strategy behind it."

One of her best-performing Quips wasn't a planned pattern reveal. It was a clip she'd already made for Instagram, reposted to Patreon for a new audience to see. That single video Quip drew nearly 6 times the engagement of her average post.

A stranger doesn't need to know anything about Hugurumi to want to see what happens next. That's the real unlock here: your existing work already has a way in for someone who's never heard of you, it just needs to end up somewhere they can find it.

Get experimental with new formats

"My Patreon community is my safe space. I'm actually a very introverted person, and Patreon is the only platform where I record videos of myself talking, because it feels like a safe place where I can share more of who I am."

Talking on camera started with her paid community. Then she tried it as a Quip, posted the same way, just publicly. It worked. People who'd never seen her page before started showing up.

A Quip doesn't need to look finished to work in your favor. Skipping the polish is what makes it read like a real update instead of another piece of finished work, and that's worth testing: a new topic, a new format, a side of yourself you haven't shown publicly yet.

Don't be afraid to repeat yourself

"Not everyone will see your post the first time, so don't be afraid to talk about the same thing more than once. The people who enjoy your work will be happy to stay informed and know what's happening."

We see this across Patreon: converting a fan often takes 5 to 10 mentions, a clip, a caption, a shoutout, so one post rarely does the job alone. Resharing something in a new format often gets through when the original post didn't.

It's also the lowest-effort tip on this list. Nothing new to make, nothing new to plan, just a simple repost.

Make free membership meaningful

"I built my free member community by offering free crochet patterns. The goal is to introduce my work to people who don't know me yet, and hopefully, over time, if they enjoy my patterns, they may decide to become paid members."

Free members get real patterns, not previews, along with sneak peeks of what she's working on—the same care and craft as paid, just a smaller slice of it. That's enough to make people want more, and it pays off: free members who find her through the feed are twice as likely to become paying members.

It's not just a Hugurumi thing. Across the network, fans who discover creators through the Patreon Home feed are 20% more likely to convert from free to paid membership within 30 days than fans who discover those creators elsewhere.

Make free membership give something real. That's what turns a feed discovery into an upgrade.

Try Silvia's tips this month

She didn't set out to grow her page or create a new strategy. She took a few snippets from her existing creative process and let people beyond the paywall see them.

Pick one thing you're already doing this month, whatever fits, and post it as a Quip. The easiest way to start is reposting something you've already made elsewhere. If it doesn't take off right away, keep experimenting until you see what sticks. Try a different clip, a different caption, a different day, a different format.

"Just post and don't overthink it," Silvia said. "Share what's going on, what's new, what benefits your members will get that month, and keep people updated."

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